Login Issue Update
I know many of you are still affected by the World login and character creation restrictions, so I would like to give you all a brief update on the progress of the measures we are taking to alleviate this situation.

Current Server Status

To ensure as many players as possible can log in and create characters on existing servers, our development and operations teams are monitoring server load and population around the clock, placing and removing restrictions with even the slightest fluctuation in numbers in order to maintain near-full capacity on each World. We are still experiencing maximum concurrent connection numbers of over 230,000 users. This number, however, has taxed some of our instance servers, and is causing unexpected down time here, as well.

Scheduled Maintenance for Wednesday, September 4 (Japan Time)

The addition of new Worlds, as well as the adjustments to the duty finder servers, will be complete as of tomorrow. We will then enter our final internal testing phase of these features in preparation. If the results from these tests are favorable, we will conduct an extended all-World maintenance on Wednesday (Japan time). Once the new Worlds are implemented and the duty finder server load has been redistributed over smaller World server groups, we believe that many of the login issues that players are currently experiencing will clear.

When Worlds do finally reopen after the maintenance, we expect a rush of players trying to log back in. To prevent any further login issues, we will be using the utmost caution when restarting each World. Please understand that there may be some congestion at this time.

The development and operations teams are currently dedicating their full resources to alleviating the issues at hand and providing all of our players with a stable environment in which to experience the realm of Eorzea.

Free Trial Extension

To apologize to our loyal fans who may not have been able to login or create characters during early access and the days immediately following launch, the development and operations teams are currently considering providing all player accounts with an additional seven days to their free trials. This includes non-legacy players from 1.0, who will be given new seven-day free trials. Trial extensions will be awarded after the aforementioned server maintenance on Wednesday. Details on the trial extension, including the extension period, will be released in a separate post as soon as they have been solidified.

We thank our fans again for the overwhelming support you have shown us over the past week. The response to FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn has well exceeded our expectations, and unfortunately resulted in our inability to provide the service which we originally intended. We humbly ask for your continued patience as we work to alleviate the issues as we truly appreciate all of our fans. We are very sorry for the frustration that has resulted from these problems.

At the following time, we will be performing maintenance on FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn to perform the operations listed below. During this period, FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn will be unavailable.

[Details]
- Addition of new Worlds
- Implementation of countermeasures to handle the influx of concurrent user counts as a result of split processing the duty finder
- Address several known issues

* Clients will update automatically upon launch after the date and time below.

* We will announce details of the fixes at a later time.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.

Further Server and System Improvements
As we continue to address server issues, I would like to follow up on my previous announcement regarding the measures being taken to improve this situation.

With the maintenance completed on September 4, we have increased the number of concurrent connections allowed across all Worlds by roughly 60,000 users. For the time being, however, we believe it necessary to maintain login and character creation restrictions, even though they have inconvenienced many of our players.

With the exception of recently added Worlds, each World can now support 7,300 to 7,800 simultaneous logins. Further increasing this limit runs the risk of causing severe lag in all zones. We will continue monitoring server loads to ensure a stable playing environment as we move forward with our plans.

Following the increase in server capacity, we reached 325,000 simultaneous logins, and we anticipate that this number will only increase. Therefore, as our development and operations teams continue to work towards a full-scale upgrade of our servers and systems in order to accommodate more players, we will continue our suspension of digital sales of the game.

During this time, we will be monitoring connections during peak times for each data center. Once we have confirmed that all Worlds and the zones within them are stable, we will continue to monitor server loads and populations in real time as we prepare to upgrade our servers and make other extensive improvements.

The following is a general outline of our major goals to improve overall server and system stability. Specific details will be announced as soon as they are available.

1. Substantially increase the number of Worlds.
2. Create a third duty finder group to further alleviate server stress.
3. Increase the number of servers used for instances.

Even with the increased capacity of all Worlds, the number of simultaneous logins is still reaching the limit. Because increasing server capacity further would result in significant stress to individual zones, frequent restrictions on character creation have been necessary for the most heavily populated Worlds.

Furthermore, since simply adding new Worlds would heavily stress the Duty Finder system, a significant increase to the number of Worlds will be accompanied by the creation of a third Duty Finder group for each data center. We will also increase the number of servers used for instances. We believe these steps will allow for a marked increase in the number of concurrent connections our servers can maintain.

With that said, we have also noticed that many players are leaving their characters idle in game due to the login restrictions we have set in place to maintain server stability. In response to requests to address this issue, we are working to implement a feature that will automatically log out characters that are idle for a prolonged period of time.

The above improvements are scheduled to be implemented next week. We will make an announcement at the beginning of next week with further details.

4. Commence World transfer service.

In addition to our above plans to improve server stability, we will begin service for World transfers. Players who were unable to join their desired World due to character creation restrictions will now be able to move to a World of their choosing.

We realize many players would like to play together with their friends, and preparations for the World transfer service are a top priority. We are also working towards resuming digital sales for those who had planned to purchase the game but were unable to do so.

5. Begin large-scale improvements for long term operations.

Next year will see the PlayStation 4 release and another influx of players. In order to ensure the best experience for all of our customers and customers-to-be, we are carefully monitoring our operations as we continue planning extensive changes to improve the game.

Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconveniences caused by the current restrictions to logins, character creation, and digital sales. I assure you that our entire company is working tirelessly to improve your gaming experience, and we hope we can count on your continued support.